Topical Discussions, December, 2023

 Topical Discussions, December, 2023

I did not plan a topical discussion program this week, but I have been rather under the weather, having had a flu since Saturday, and heavy congestion, so if I disappear for a minute, it is only because I have been coughing rather consistently for several days, and hopefully it will not plague me too badly here this evening. Because I was sick, I decided to do this topical podcast, and even though each of the topics were at least partly prepared, it still took me nearly as long to complete as my last few Genesis commentaries. But maybe that is because I cannot focus up to my usual ability.

It also happens to be 15 years to the day that I arrived home from prison, in 2008. Technically, I was not really yes “out” of prison, but I was on home confinement for nearly the last three months of my sentence, which is a decision that was made at the halfway-house where I had spent about six weeks. Officially, my sentence was completed on March 6th, 2009. But by January 4th I was able to register the Christogenea.org domain name, and then start building my website. I had no idea how large of a project it would become, or how long I would be able to do it. But no matter how long I can do this, I praise Yahweh that I have been able to do it at all. Since Christogenea is also a costly venture, I will be here so long as I continue to get enough support to sustain it, and sometimes that is a challenge. So I still do not know how long I will be able to do it. Yahweh willing, I shall continue, and hopefully be at it at least as long as Clifton had persevered. I might need that much time just to be able to finish some of the things which I have already started.

Here I plan to discuss the meaning of the Hebrew word zuwr, which is often translated as strange or stranger, the true meaning of the word human, the meaning of the word adam, which expands on my recent offering in my Genesis commentary in several ways, and also the fact that the Greek word ἀρσενοκοίτης which was used by Paul in two of his epistles is Sodomy, or what we now call homosexuality, and it is forbidden in the New Testament just as it had been in the Old Testament.

For some reason, in our most recent Wednesday Night Bible Study the following topic came up, and I had written on it already in brief, so yesterday morning I thought to expand what I wrote, and also voice displeasure with the mainstream Hebrew lexicons, because if they were accurate, I would never have to write things like this. So not only should this exhibit the true meaning of one Hebrew word for stranger, but it should also expose some of the problems and challenges with the mainstream Hebrew language resources. To give my listeners some insight into the scope my efforts to explain these things, although I already had a couple of paragraphs as a head start, the following few pages took about twelve hours to research, outline and write, and in the end I can only hope it is understood. The other topics we shall present here took another six hours on top of that.

“Stranger” in the Old Testament: the Hebrew word zuwr.

Here I am going to expand on a subject which I had discussed earlier, in Part 18 of our presentation with TruthVid's 100 Proofs that the Israelites were White. There I had briefly discussed the various Hebrew words which are usually translated as stranger, as there are several of them, and they all have different shades of meaning. Perhaps in the course of these topical presentations, I can eventually go through each of them in detail. But for now, we will focus only on one of them, זור, which Strong’s had transliterated as zuwr and listed under # 2114 in his original Concordance. Here I am going to be critical of Strong’s for doing that, because by so doing, he separated the word from its more particular meaning, which I hope to demonstrate here. If a language has five words that can mean stranger, it is only logical that there must be some particular reason why each one can mean stranger, there must be some distinction in meaning between each of them. Once we understand the particular meaning, we can better assess what is meant by Scripture when the word appears in given contexts. In the case of this word, in my opinion, that is quite important.

In Strong’s Concordance this word זור or zuwr (# 2114) is considered to be a primitive root, something with which I only partially agree. Then, I would also consider Strong’s primary definition to be inappropriate, where it is defined as a verb and he has “to turn aside (especially for lodging)”. There is no indication in any use of the term in the Hebrew of the Old Testament which supports that definition, so far as I can find, except that Gesenius also defined it in that manner, where he turned to a similar Arabic word to define זור or zuwr (p. 242). Gesenius, defining the verb as “to turn aside, to depart” and citing an Arabic use of a similar word, offers three verses of Scripture to support his definition, Job 19:13, Psalm 78:30 and Psalm 58:4. These we shall discuss below.

However first, and as a digression, I must state my own opinion, and say that turning to Arabic is not a good method of defining Hebrew words, since what we know as Arabic had not even been formed as a distinct language until some time around the period when the Mohammedans had written their book. So it is as many as 3,000 years younger than Hebrew, and it is a bastard offshoot of late Aramaic. By itself, it is certainly no use as an authority regarding Hebrew, since it was formed in a different and later age, and under different cultural conditions, by a bastard people. While there are some very obscure terms in Scripture to which Arabic may lend some insight, I would rather not consult Arabic at all, unless there is no other choice, and that might lend some insight but it would not provide an authoritative definition. It would be much better to consult Aramaic, and especially Akkadian, since as I had demonstrated in my Genesis presentations, both Hebrew and Aramaic are early dialects of Akkadian. But if a term has a clearly definable range of usage in Biblical Hebrew, as this term certainly does, there is no reason at all to turn to Arabic in order to broaden a definition, as Gesenius did here and as he quite often had done elsewhere, because there is no assurance that the term did not evolve new usages later in time, which did not belong to earlier ages.

So turning to Arabic in order to broaden Hebrew word meanings is sort of like imagining that every time the word gay appears in Shakespeare, that he had written in reference to Sodomites. But neither would Shakespeare be able to understand much of what passes for American English today, and there are only four hundred years between us, and not two thousand, as there are between Moses and the bastard Mohammad.

[For our purposes here, for all Strong’s definitions the only citation is the Strong’s number. For Gesenius, we are citing Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Baker Books, 1979, and will provide page numbers in parentheses.]

Strong’s then offers a secondary definition, and while the definition is appropriate, in my opinion he failed in that it should have been a completely different entry under a different spelling. But perhaps he also followed Gesenius in this, as we shall discuss later. Strong’s secondary definition of this word זור or zuwr (# 2114) is “hence to be a foreigner, strange, profane; specifically (active participle) to commit adultery” and while we understand that intercourse with foreigners is the same as committing adultery, that should probably have been left to context and should not really be a part of the definition, because the word is used in other contexts.

Where, in my opinion, Strong’s had failed is to lump together these two definitions under the entry for this word זור or zuwr (# 2114), because on every occasion where the word is used to describe something strange, such as strange fire or a strange god, or where it describes a stranger, the spelling is only זר or zer (# 2114), zayin-resh, two letters, rather than zayin-vav-resh, or zuwr, which is three letters. Strong’s has no other entries for this particular word, although there is an important entry for a word of the same spelling, which we shall also discuss. However Gesenius does have a separate entry for זר or zer, which he defined as “a stranger, an enemy” and then said “see the root זור or zuwr No. II.” There, Gesenius made the claim that זור or zuwr is the root of זר or zer, but with that I do not agree. Typically in grammar, shorter words are not derived from longer words, except perhaps in cases of elision or the slang use of some terms, however even those shortened forms are never labelled as grammatical roots. But rather, longer words are derived from shorter ones, which usually also have more basic definitions. Furthermore, Strong’s defines זור or zuwr only as a verb, where Gesenius defined זר or zer as a noun, although in this entry (p. 252) he gave no example of its use.

So going back to his definition of זור or zuwr Gesenius had initially defined the term as a verb meaning “to turn aside, to depart”, as we have stated, and then as “to turn from the way, to lodge at one’s house” where he cites an Arabic term. Both of these definitions we must reject. In the first, he cites three Scriptures in which his interpretation is not necessarily valid, and in the second, he only cites Arabic, and the term is never used in that manner in Scripture, so he provides no supporting citation. Strong’s definition must be considered inaccurate for that same reason, as he has no better reason or authority than Gesenius and seems to have followed him in his references to Arabic. Then Gesenius offers another definition, at II., to which he had referred his readers from his entry for זר or zer, “Participle a stranger, strange, especially – (1) of another nation, an alien by birth…” and he cites an entire list of Biblical verses where the King James Version usually translated this word as stranger.

Now to look at the three passages which Gesenius used to support his primary definition, as that is also the definition which appears in Strong’s, Job 19:13, Psalm 78:30 and Psalm 58:3:

Job 19:13 He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.

Psalm 78:30 They were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths, 31 The wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.

Psalm 58:3 The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.

None of these verses necessarily support the definition of זור or zuwr as “to turn aside”. Even if sin may often be described as a turning aside, or a wandering, or with some other similar metaphor, the metaphor cannot provide a literal meaning for this verb. In all three of these cases, however, the King James translation of the word as estranged is appropriate. To be estranged is to be alienated, to be pushed away literally or figuratively, and not merely to turn aside. So we will give a case for our own definition later on. But first, it must be stated that in those three examples provided by Gesenius, and in every other place we can find where the word stranger or something similar appears and is listed by Strong’s as being from the word זור or zuwr (# 2114), the spelling is only זר or zer, and never זור or zuwr.

So it is זר or zer which is translated as stranger or as strange, usually referring to fire or to an idol god, but more frequently also to people, in each of the following 70 verses:

Exodus 29:33, 30:9 and 30:33; Leviticus 10:1, 22:10, 22:12 and 22:13; Numbers 1:51, 3:4, 3:10, 3:38, 16:40, 18:4 and 18:7 and 26:61; Deuteronomy 25:5 and 32:16; 1 Kings 3:18; 2 Kings 19:24; Job 15:19, 19:15 and 19:27 ("another"); Psalms 44:20, 54:3, 69:8, 81:9 and 109:11; Proverbs 2:16, 5:3, 5:10, 5:17, 5:20, 6:1, 7:5, 11:15, 14:10, 20:16, 22:14, 23:33, 27:2 and 27:13; Isaiah 1:7, 17:10, 25:2, 25:5, 28:21, 29:5, 43:12 and 61:5; Jeremiah 2:25, 3:13, 5:19, 18:14 (of flowing waters, see the NASB), 30:8, 51:2 (2, fanners, fan!) and 51:51; Lamentations 5:2; Ezekiel 7:21, 11:9, 16:32, 28:7, 28:10, 30:12 and 31:12; Hosea 5:7, 7:9, 8:7 and 8:12; Joel 3:17 and Obadiah 1:11.

Then as a verb, זר or zer is translated as estranged, to become a stranger or strange, or something similar to these, in the following 6 verses: Job 19:13 and 19:17, Psalms 58:3 and 78:30, Isaiah 1:4 where it is translated as “gone away” in the King James Version, and Ezekiel 14:5. In every one of these 76 verses, the word is never spelled זור or zuwr, but always as זר or zer. So why did both Strong and Gesenius list it under a form in which is not found by itself in the usage in the text?

Then, there is another word which is spelled exactly the same way, זר or zer (# 2213), which describes something which makes a border. So זר or zer is defined by Strong's as “a chaplet (as spread around the top), i.e. (specifically) a border moulding.” A molding creates a border around an object or an area, and a chaplet is defined as a garland or wreath around a person’s head, or around a column or some other structure in architecture.

So in the King James Version, this word זר or zer is translated as crown in the following ten passages: Exodus 25:11, 25:24, 25:25, 30:3, 30:4, 37:2, 37:11, 37:12, 37:26 and 37:27. In many other passages, even in these same chapters of the Exodus, the derivative word נזר or nezer (# 5145) appears as crown, such as in Exodus 29:6 and 39:30, and from that was the word for Nazarite derived. In Numbers 6:13 both of these words appear, where nezer is translated as separation. Another word derived from nezer and spelled the same way, נזר or nazar (# 5144), is to separate in reference to the Nazarite in Numbers 6:2. So these words help to establish the meaning of the root word זר or zer as something which creates a border. When a Nazirite is consecrated, the consecration is the mark of his separation, and that creates a figurative border around that individual, or puts a figurative crown upon his head marking his distinct condition.

So Gesenius’ definition of זר or zer (# 2213) is more definite in this sense than Strong’s, where he wrote “border, edge, wreathed work, crown…” and that is also just after his entry for זר or zer which he defined as “a stranger, an enemy” but referred his reader back to the verb spelled as זור or zuwr (# 2114). So now we would assert that nearly all of the verse examples which Gesenius gave in the entry for זור or zuwr to support his definitions of stranger or alien actually belong here, because this is how they are spelled, and then we would assert that a זר or zer is a stranger or an enemy, because the word is spelled in the same way as a word which means border and also represents a crowning or a distinction, because such a stranger is one who violated that distinction, who had come in from outside, transgressing one’s borders. In Jeremiah 18:14 the word זר or zer is even used to describe flowing waters where it is translated in the King James Version as waters “from another place”, and where the New American Standard Bible has “from a foreign land”. So that is also the meaning of the same word when it is used of people.

Therefore, if I could create a lexicon, the Hebrew word זור or zuwr found at Strong’s # 2114 would not be considered a primitive root, but as a verb derived from זר or zer, which in turn would have to have its own entry. But perhaps זור or zuwr should not even have an entry because, as I shall discuss below, I have only found it with that spelling in derivative words which have related meanings, and never once by itself. For that reason alone, it seems that the entry is dishonest, because the variant spelling separates it from a clearly related noun meaning border, which is the actual root word.

So furthermore, the verb זור or zuwr would also be spelled as זר or zer, and it would be defined only as to be an alien, or as a verb, to be estranged or alienated in the sense of being pushed away, or outside of one’s borders, referring back to a separate entry for זר or zer next to the word which means border, according to Gesenius who even has such an entry defined in that manner just before the word corresponding to Strong’s # 2213, and who properly defines it as “a stranger, an enemy”. Of course, Gesenius does not have Strong’s numbers, and neither does the Brown, Driver and Briggs lexicon, but most publications of those editions have printed the corresponding Strong’s numbers in the margins for the convenience of their readers. The words, however, are not always in the same order, and the lexicons have many entries for words which are not found in Strong’s, although on occasion they should be.

In support of these statements, going back to the word זור or zuwr at Strong’s # 2114, that spelling does not even seem to be correct, as I have suggested. So I searched throughout every occurrence of the letter combination זור (zayin-vav-resh) in a raw copy of the Hebrew Old Testament, one with no rabbinical vowel points or other extraneous characters, and most of the words I found were only derivative forms, or belonged to a similarly spelled word with a different meaning.

There is a word with the same meaning זור or zuwr at Strong’s # 2115 which he defined as a verb meaning “to press together, to tighten”, which was translated as crush in the King James Version in Job 39:15, in the phrase “that the foot may crush them”, speaking of eggs in the wild. While this use is peculiar, it is the only example and we will have to set it aside for our purposes here. With the addition of a he at the end, the resulting word זורה or zuwreh (# 2116) is crushed in Isaiah 59:5. So this is a digression, and we have otherwise ignored occurrences of this word elsewhere in this discussion.

Going back to זור or zuwr where the letters are used as a component of larger words, where an aleph is added at the beginning of זור or zuwr the resulting word, אזור or azar, is to gird something, or describes a girdle (#'s 232, 247). Where an ayin is added at the beginning, the word עזור or azar is to help (# 5826), or it is also used as a given name, where it is Azur in the King James Version. A very similar word, עזור or ezer (# 5828) is help in Genesis 2:18 where Eve was a “help meet” for Adam. Where it is prefixed with a mem, it is מזור mazuwr (# 4204, 4205) which is to bind. All of these words retain the concept of circling or encircling something, like a border also does.

So although Strong and Gesenius list all of the occurrences of this word under זור or zuwr, wherever it was used in the Hebrew texts it is not spelled as זור, but only as זר, so it begins to appear that both Strong and Gesenius, by having even listed this word under זור rather than the spelling זר, were being deceitful and dishonest, purposely or not. Then, going back to Gesenius’ entry for זור, or zuwr (# 2114), in a third definition for the word he claimed that where Solomon in Proverbs had used it as an adjective, to describe “strange women”, that it only refers to women “of another family”, and along with other definitions which water down and obscure the meaning of the word, it is manifest that Gesenius also had an agenda in redirecting the word from its primary meaning of a border. Anyone who is properly in Israel is a member of the same wide family, and cannot be described with the word zuwr, which actually should have been listed as zer. Only border intruders may be described by the word. Of all the different words for stranger in the Old Testament, a זור or zuwr, which is properly a זר or zer, is a border-jumper, someone of any race who comes across one’s border.

There are other words which mean border in Hebrew. The most common term for border, as in the borders of a land, is גבול or gebuwl (# 1366), or sometimes גבל or gebel (# 1379). Certain other terms which are sometimes translated as border literally mean end, flank or side, or even hand, such as at 2 Samuel 8:3, where a word literally meaning hand was used to describe a border in relation to a particular territory. However while gebuwl (# 1366) is literally a cord, which may be used to create a border, literally or figuratively, the word zer (# 2213) which Gesenius defines as a “border, edge, wreathed work, crown…” seems to be an even more distinguished way of describing a border, stressing the significance of the border in a more illustrious manner. The word first appears in Scripture where it is used to describe a stranger in Exodus chapter 29 (29:33), after Yahweh defined the borders for Israel in the giving of the law, before Israel had even possessed any land with physical borders, so its use certainly is significant.

Now there is one more word to discuss, which helps to establish our insistence that the word zer when it refers to a stranger must describe a border jumper. That is the word found at Strong’s # 2214, which is זרא or zera, and which Strong’s defines as “disgust, in the sense of estrangement” stating that it is a derivative from the זור or zuwr, which he listed at # 2114. Of course, we have already explained that זור or zuwr should really be listed as זר or zer, since it is really the same word found at # 2213 which Gesenius defined primarily as border. This word זרא or zera is defined by Gesenius as loathing (p. 252). In my opinion, the existence of this word and its use in Scripture helps serve to prove that the attempts to define the word זור or zuwr as a stranger in the sense of a mere house guest, as Strong’s and Gesenius had used some Arabic word to do that, certainly are nothing but folly and lies. A zuwr stranger is a border-jumper, and the use of this word describes that as something to be loathed. Clifton used to call the border-jumpers sewer people, and he was pretty close, since in ancient Israel they are zuwr-people.

So concerning the ancient Israelites, a zuwr is one who crossed the borders, and that could be someone of the same race, since Egypt, Aram, Cush and many other races related to Israel dwelt on their borders, or it could refer to one of the other races such as the Canaanites, Kenites or Nephilim which were on the borders, and who were hated for other reasons which are expressed in the law. In the 69th Psalm, which is attributed to David, we read “8 I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children.” David was not implying that he became like someone of another race, but only that he became estranged from his own brothers. So in that passage, the word for stranger is זר or zer, after Strong’s # 2114, and the word for alien is nokriy, after Strong’s # 5237. That word we shall further elaborate on at another time, as it really only describes someone who is not familiar. The prayer was made when David’s son Absalom had organized a coup against him, and pushed David beyond the borders, out of his kingdom, whereby he was also made unrecognizable to his own brethren who knew him as king.

Now, even with that, our exposition of this word cannot be complete until we at least briefly discuss its definition in another popular lexicon, which is the Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Here we refer to the edition published by Hendrickson Publishers in 2021, which we shall refer to as BDB. The BDB in its entry for the word זר or zer, on page 279, which is the word which Strong’s listed at # 2213, refers the reader to their entry for the word זור or zuwr, which they have on page 266. Likewise, in that same place, in their entry for the word זרא or zera found at Strong’s # 2214 the BDB refers readers to a different portion of their entry for זור or zuwr.

Then, in their entry for זור or zuwr, which is found on page 266 of their lexicon, the BDB begins their definition with the words “be a stranger”, citing an Arabic word, and then they continue their definition by stating: “incline toward, repair to, visit… honour as a visitor or guest… decline, turn aside” where they offer another Arabic word and continue with “visitor”, citing a supposedly Aramaic equivalent to yet another Hebrew word, סור, cuwr or suwr, which is found at Strong’s # 5493 and which is defined there as “to turn off (literally or figuratively)”. But for that, the BDB offers as a citation only a single reference to an obscure German Hebraist named König. This we cannot accept, since it is absolutely contrary to the way in which the word is used throughout Scripture. Furthermore, there is another Hebrew word frequently translated as stranger which does bear this meaning, and that is נר or ger, which is a sojourner (Strong’s # 1616).

Aside from that, which in our opinion reflects a tremendous lapse in critical thinking and sound scholarship, BDB repeats some examples from the common translations of זר or zer as strange or stranger, and even provides the same definition as Gesenius had for זרא or zera as loathsome. But t/ he initial portion of their definition of ור or zuwr is so clouded with egalitarian thought and a view of Arabic as some sort of authority on the much older and ostensibly more upright Hebrew language that it pollutes a proper Biblical view of why the word should mean stranger in the first place. All three of these lexicons, those of Strong, Gesenius, and Brown, Driver and Briggs, are polluted in this manner. From the Hebrew language and Scripture itself, it is readily evident that a זור or zuwr stranger is someone from beyond the borders, and that a violation of the border must have been seen as being loathsome to the early Hebrews who used the term in that manner.

The word "human"

What follows is from a Christogenea Forum post which I had made on November 4th of this year:

This is a subject that keeps coming up among people newer to Christian Identity, mostly because it is repeated by many old-school Christian Identity pastors and their students. James Wickstrom was one of the worst of them in this regard.

The word human does not mean hued man and it NEVER had that meaning in ANY language. Period.

First, the word hue, which does basically mean a shade of color, is given the following definition in the Oxford English Dictionary:

Old English hīw, hēow (also ‘form, appearance’, obsolete except in Scots), of Germanic origin; related to Swedish hy ‘skin, complexion’. The sense ‘colour, shade’ dates from the mid 19th cent.

The word hue where it refers to a color or shade is from a Germanic term, but it is only recently used in that manner. The etymologies given in other dictionaries mention an Old Norse root for the word, rather than Swedish specifically, and mention a related Old German variation. There are a couple of words with similar sounds and spellings in Hebrew, but they are pronouns which have nothing at all to do with color, so they must be considered to be completely unrelated (see Strong's #'s 1931-32).

No Germanic terms had ever lent themselves to Classical Latin, as the Latin language was fully developed long before the Romans ever had any contact with any Germanic tribes. The first such contacts are recorded in histories and occurred in the early 4th century BC, when certain of the Galatae, or Gauls, had sacked Rome.

The word humanus in Latin basically means kind or compassionate, a trait which the ancient Romans believed distinguished men from animals. The following definitions are from a Latin dictionary which I cite often, The New College Latin & English Dictionary by John C. Traupman. These are the Latin words from which came the English word human:

• humane adverb, like a human being; politely, gently, with compassion

• humanitas adjective, human nature; humanity; kindness, compassion, human feeling; courtesy; culture, refinement, civilization

• humaniter adverb, like a human being; reasonably; gently, with compassion

• humanitus adverb, humanly; humanely, kindly, compassionately

• humanus adjective, of a human being, human; humane, kind, compassionate; courteous; cultured, refined, civilized

So the Latin words humane, humanus, etc. have no relation to skin color. Rather, they describe traits which belong exclusivity to men. The terms really have nothing to do with race, but it is also true that men in ancient times did not perceive those traits in the black races. One clear example of that is found in the writings of Diodorus Siculus. Siculus means "of Sicily", where Diodorus lived, died and was buried in a town called Agyrium in the 1st century BC, and he wrote in Greek.

So the following is from an essay I wrote in 2003 titled The Race of Genesis 10:

Now to turn to the Kush, or Ethiopia, of Africa. In the first eleven chapters of his third book, Diodorus Siculus draws from much earlier historians (as he always did for whomever he wrote about) to describe the various peoples of African Ethiopia, and it is evident that those tribes contrast with one another quite starkly. The first Ethiopians he discusses are endowed with what we may consider a well-developed form of “western civilization”, for he states “they say that they were the first to be taught to honor the gods and to hold sacrifices and processions and festivals”, they quote Homer in reference to themselves (Iliad 1:423-424), they recount the unsuccessful invasions into their country by Cambyses and Semiramis, and they claim that the Egyptians were originally Ethiopian colonists, led by Osiris. The two types of their writing (like Egypt), popular or demotic and sacred or hieroglyphic, are described, and it is said that the sacred is common among these Ethiopians. Their priests were much like the Egyptian. They believed that their kings gained sovereignty by Divine Providence, their laws and punishments were from custom, and they practiced the same flight of refuge which the Greeks did, which was similar to the Hebrew Levitical cities of refuge. An Ethiopian king under Ptolemy was educated in Greece and studied Philosophy, and aside from a few odd customs, there is no reason to believe that these Ethiopians, whose physical characteristics were not mentioned, were anything but civilized, and not much different than the rest of “western” society.

In stark contrast to those cultured Ethiopians which Diodorus first discussed, beginning at 3.8.1 he says: “But there are also a great many other tribes of the Ethiopians [and here it is apparent that, like “Phoenicia” and other labels, “Ethiopia” has become merely a geographical designation, rather than an ethnographical one], some of them dwelling in the land lying on both banks of the Nile and on the islands in the river, others inhabiting the neighboring country of Arabia [between the Nile and the Red Sea], and others residing in the interior of Libya [the rest of Africa - Sudan here]. The majority of them, and especially those who dwell along the river, “are black in color and have flat noses and wooly hair.” Here it is evident that Diodorus is describing the Nubians and other wandering black tribes of the region. He continues: “As for their spirit they are entirely savage and display the nature of a wild beast...and are as far removed as possible from human kindness to one another...and cultivating none of the practices of civilized life...they present a striking contrast when considered in the light of our own customs.”

So surely it is apparent here, that if we do not have a White culture in Ethiopia in an era not long before Diodorus’ own, we certainly have at least the remnants of one. Ezekiel chapter 30 lists Ethiopia among “all the mingled people”, and all of this fits very well with the picture of a once Caucasian but now adulterated Kush in that region.

Here it should be fully apparent, that the word human was NEVER intended to describe any so-called "hued man", but in fact, it means just the opposite! In truth, the words in Latin describe traits which are generally expected to be found in White people, but which are very often never found in non-Whites.

If anything irritates me, it is the fact that too many old-school Identity Christians keep repeating fables that have no basis in fact, something which continually discredits our cause and makes us look like complete fools.

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The Meaning of the Name Adam

I have expounded on this subject even beyond what I had written in my commentary on Genesis chapter 2, and would like to present it here, so that I would also have a short recording on this subject alone.

In Scripture, adam is the word used as both the name for the race of men which Yahweh God had created, as it is explained in Genesis 1:26-27 and Genesis 5:1, and also of the first member of that race, the patriarch Adam, in Genesis chapter 2. Here I will fully define the name, and offer a prophetic meaning.

What follows is extracted from Part 2 of my commentary on Genesis, titled The Society of Family, and a comment I made there on November 13th. [Recently I have edited a section of that presentation, to amend for some missing information, so it is now expanded beyond what is found in the podcast as well as the Forum post, which I will probably also amend. The information below is not in the same order as it appears in the presentation.]

In Strong’s Concordance there are six entries for the Hebrew term אדם, or adam, and they are only distinguished in such a manner according to the parts of speech, or how they are used in Scripture. So there is a verb, two common nouns, an adjective and two proper nouns, which are the name Adam and the later name Edom. The common nouns are first man, in reference to the Adamic man, and then another which was used to describe one or more red gemstones. Of the remaining forms, in his original Concordance James Strong defined the adjective as rosy and the verb as “to show blood (in the face), i.e. flush or turn rosy.”

While Identity Christians are often mocked for citing those definitions, and while more recent lexicons have modified them to suit the diversity agenda, James Strong did not manufacture these definitions when he first published Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible in 1890.

The popular Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament is said to have been based upon the Hebrew and German lexicon of Wilhelm Gesenius, which was translated into English in the 19th century by Edward Robinson. But in some places it diverges sharply from Gesenius, and one of them is in its definition of the Hebrew word adam.

Wilhelm Gesenius began publishing his first Hebrew lexicons in German before 1815, and Edward Robinson, who was also an acquaintance of Gesenius and who had thought quite highly of him, first published his English translation of Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon in 1836. Over the decades leading up to this, Robinson did much work in Greek and other languages with other scholars. These men did not have some sort of nefarious neo-Nazi or racist agenda when they published these magnificent tomes, books which became foundational for understanding Biblical Hebrew, along with Robinson’s Greek lexicon, which was also published in 1836. Then in 1837 Robinson was appointed as a professor of biblical literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

So in Robinson’s translation of Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon, under the first entry for the word אדם, or adam, which is the verb, on page 13 we read: “To be red, ruddy,” and after supplying a citation from Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations it states that “Whiteness and ruddiness belong to the description of youthful beauty…” Other definitions of the verb are “made red, dyed red”, citing passages from Exodus, Isaiah and Nahum, and “to be red (as wine in a cup), to sparkle”, citing Proverbs 23:31. At the end of his definition for the verb, the reader is referred to the word דם, or dam, which is blood.

Another translator of Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon was Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, who was born in Falmouth, in Cornwall, England, to Quaker parents in 1813. He received an education at the Falmouth classical school from 1825 to 1828. Later, he received an LL.D. degree, which distinguishes him as a Doctor of Laws, from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in 1850…. Trigelles seems to be most distinguished for his early work in textual criticism of the New Testament, understanding that the Textus Receptus did not rest on truly ancient authorities. Then later, as he also completed and published a Hebrew grammar in 1852, he translated the Latin edition of Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, which was published in 1846 and 1857.

So in Tregelles’ translation of Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon, under the first entry for the word אדם, or adam, which is the verb, on page 13 we read: “To be red, ruddy,” and after supplying a citation from Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations it states that “Whiteness and ruddiness belong to the description of youthful beauty…” Other definitions of the verb are “made red, dyed red”, citing passages from Exodus, Isaiah and Nahum, and “to be red (as wine in a cup), to sparkle”, citing Proverbs 23:31. At the end of his definition for the verb, the reader is referred to the word דם, or dam, which is blood.

Likewise, we may see how these words were translated into ancient Greek or Latin. For example, in the Song of Solomon, or Canticles, in chapter 5 we read, where the bride speaks of her husband: “10 My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.” There the word translated as ruddy is a form of this word adam, and in the Greek Septuagint it was translated as πυρρός, an adjective which means fiery red. So there should be no doubt that adam does not simply mean man, as there were other Hebrew words which do mean man, but rather, adam is a descriptive term which is later applied to all of his descendants as well as to the first man Adam. We may call adult male hominids of other races man, but they can never properly be called adam.

In grammar, when a Hebrew verb is prefixed with the letter aleph, or א, it signifies the first person singular future tense of the verb. When a Hebrew noun is prefixed with the same letter, it is said to simply designate “I”, which is the first person singular pronoun in English. So here we may assert that the word adam is the noun for blood prefixed with this letter aleph, and it means “I, blood”, and therefore the word adam describes blood personified as man, but in the Genesis context the meaning is valid only in reference to the blood of his own particular kind. Therefore Adam exemplifies his race, which would later come in the form of his own descendants, and therefore throughout Scripture the children of Israel called themselves collectively by his name. Unfortunately, we have translated the word into a common noun which we also apply to other adult male hominids, and that has caused much confusion, and once again helps the enemies of our God to promote their diversity agenda.

At the website Discover The Holy Language there is an article titled Common Hebrew Prefixes and Suffixes where we read in part:

The prefix א (Alef) means ‘I’.

The original meaning of this letter is ‘source’ which made it ideal for conventional use as a prefix meaning ‘I’ referring to who is the source of what it being spoken.

So we would assert that while adam as a common word means red or ruddy, because dam in Hebrew is blood, the word was nevertheless formed from dam affixed with the letter Alef as a prefix, “I blood”, Yahweh informing us that the blood of the Adamic man was from of Him.

Later in Scripture we read, in Leviticus chapter 17, “11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” The blood of the second, or last man Adam, which is Yahshua Christ, certainly did make an atonement for the entire Adamic race, of which those Old Covenant sacrifices were symbolic. The Adamic race being born from of God, being the only race of hominids in the creation accounts of Yahweh God, Yahshua Christ being God incarnate is both Son and Father, and assumed full responsibility for His creation in His earthly ministry. He is the true patriarch, and here in this creation account which begins in verse 4 of Genesis chapter 2, we see the foundations for a society of family: the Adamic family. This society of family is based on a common blood, even if Adam did not say it quite in that same manner himself.

The name "adam" as prophecy

On November 13th I added the following to part 2 of my Genesis, The Society of Family, as a comment:

Yesterday morning I was pondering the fact that the name Adam in Hebrew means "I, blood" and it dawned on me that the name itself is a prophecy of the Messiah, that Yahweh named Adam in such a way because Yahweh Himself would ultimately "be the first born among many brethren" (Romans 8:29) and has "has taken upon Himself of the offspring of Abraham" (Hebrews 2:16).

Where we read that Yahweh God “called their name Adam”, by saying “I, blood” He had announced that He would take part in that same blood. So "adam", the name, is the ultimate prophecy of Yahshua Christ!

Ἀρσενοκοίτης is Sodomy (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10)

The following subject has been in the Desktop folder of my computer since March of 2022.

In Greek there is a word, ἀνήρ, which means man as well as male, with a wide range of related uses in various contexts. For example, it describes an adult male as compared to a youth or a boy, according to Liddell & Scott. A related word, ἄρσην, is defined as masculine in that same source. In their definition, they state that this word is used to mean masculine whether the subject is the grammatical gender of nouns, or “the male sex” whether it be of men or plants. It was used figuratively to describe something “robust, coarse, opposite θῆλυς (tender, delicate)”, where it may already be realized that θῆλυς literally means feminine in Greek.

As for Sodomy, a term for which we now use the euphemism "homosexuality", the Greek word is ἀρσενοκοίτης (arsenokoites) and it was used in Scripture and in later times to describe sexual relations between men. In their Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell & Scott define ἀρσενοκοίτης very simply as “lying with men”, citing only the New Testament. But in the large 9th edition of their lexicon, they define it as sodomite, explicitly citing 1 Corinthians 6:9 and the Anthologia Palatina (9.686), a wide collection of Greek epigrams and other inscriptions.

That particular epigram is found in Book 9 of the Greek Anthology published by the Loeb Classical Library at Harvard University, at 9.686, and it was originally an anonymous inscription found on the eastern gate of Thessalonica. It dates to the time of the emperor Basil I in the 9th century AD, and says in part: “Thou has no need to fear the barbarian or sodomites”, which at the time, and in this historical context, was a Greek charge against the invading Arabs. So some things never change, and they are still the same today, as sodomy and heathens are always friends. Basil is mentioned in the epigram, where he is called “destroyer of the valour of insolent Babylon and light of incorrupt justice.”

So the word ἀρσενοκοίτης is a compound of ἄρσην, which is masculine, and the Greek word κοίτη, which is a feminine form of κοῖτος which is a resting-place or a bed, and κοίτη is “especially a marriage-bed”, as Liddell & Scott define the term. Then, as they also explain, the term is used “of sexual connexion”, citing passages from Numbers and Leviticus in the Septuagint, and “to become pregnant by a man”, citing Romans 9:10 where it is translated as conceived in the King James Version, or “lasciviousness” citing Romans 13:13 where it is chambering in the King James Version, the same way that we may say that a man bedded his spouse in modern times. The ancient pagan Greeks certainly knew sodomy, of which there are countless examples in the Classical literature. But they did not use the explicit term ἀρσενοκοίτης, which seems to have been coined by Paul of Tarsus.

The word ἀρσενοκοίτης is used in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10, so here we shall cite the King James Version:

1 Corinthians 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Timothy 1:10 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

Here are the same passages from the Christogenea New Testament:

1 Corinthians 6:9 Or do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of Yahweh? Do not be led astray: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminates, nor homosexuals,

1 Timothy1:10 fornicating, homosexual, kidnapping, lying, falsely swearing men, along with anything else which is contrary to sound instruction

So the King James translators chose to render ἀρσενοκοίτης, a noun which is used both times in a masculine plural form, as "abusers of themselves with mankind" and "them that defile themselves with mankind". Those translations may not seem clear to many people today. Today lovers of sodomites everywhere take advantage of the ambiguity of the translations to attempt to defend sodomites and to rewrite Paul's words. Newer translations twist them, because, as they believe, everyone knows that Jesus loves fags. The deceit is incredible, because the plain truth is that God hates fags.

At the time when the King James translation was made (1611) the term sodomite was already in use, but it was used to describe an even wider range of sinful sexual acts than those between two men. Another term than those which were used in those passages from the King James Version, which is "buggerer" may have been used, and I do not know why it was not. The first anti-sodomy law in England was the Buggery Act of the reign of Henry VIII, which explicitly forbid anal sex between men. So at least 80 years before the King James Version was translated, the action described in the word ἀρσενοκοίτης was called "buggery" in English, and those who committed it were called "buggerers". Why didn't the King James Version use the term "buggerers"?

And since they chose not to use “buggerers”, why did they not use the term “sodomites” which they used four times in the Old Testament? In 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12, and 22:46, and in 2 Kings 23:7, the word sodomites appears in Scripture in the King James Version, and on each occasion it was translated from a masculine form of the Hebrew word קדש or qadesh (# 6945), which signifies a male who has been sanctified at a temple, meaning that he was given over to the service of a temple. In ancient times, both men and boys who had been devoted to pagan temples were used as male prostitutes, something which is fully evident in Classical literature.

In Leviticus 18:22 we read: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” So in the Septuagint Greek we read: καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν.

Here we will parse and translate that one word or phrase at a time:

καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος And with a male

οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ you shall not sleep

κοίτην in a marriage-bed

γυναικός of a woman, or wife

βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν. for it is an abomination.

So Brenton translated the passage to read, quite reasonably: “22 You shall not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination.”

While the word ἀρσενοκοίτης does not appear in that passage, we clearly see the words ἄρσην, which is male, and κοίτη, a reference to the act of coitus which is conducted in a marriage bed. This is more than illustrated in the fact that the verb κοιμάω means to sleep, as we also say “sleep with a woman” as a euphemism for sexual relations, and the purpose for that is illustrated in the word for woman which follows κοίτη. If this was not describing sexual relations between men, neither of those two words would have been necessary. There is no excusing sodomy from a Biblical perspective. These Scriptures prohibit sodomy without question, and there is no other valid interpretation.